Actions - sounds - words!

We started today by working in the space, moving to various words:

Big, small, bumpy, smooth, stupendous (had to define that one for them), super-heroic, etc.

They were to find actions to express the adjectives. No sound.

The second time through, we did the same sounds and actions and they could add sound effects.

Third time through, they did the actions to the words and sounded the words at the same time: Biiiigggg! BIG! I encouraged them to play with the sound of the word as they explored their actions, explore the sound as well.

Next, in pairs, they conversed with oppositional words. One is Big, the other is Small. Back and forth playing with the sounds and actions, conversing, responding.

Finally, in the same pairs, they were instructed to each pick a word from their poem and use that to converse with, playing with sounds and actions. That took about 15 minutes. For the next 15 minutes, they went back into rehearsal of their poems with their partners, with the instruction to apply what they'd learned to their poems.

We looked at several examples during the final ten minutes of class.

Confidence is deepening. Projection is improving. Not everyone managed to enhance more than one or two words, so I asked them to underline words they thought might work in their poems for homework.

Next week, we will get into some articulation work.